Is the best browser I've found totally unprotected against spyware?

I have toyed around with Google Chrome for brief intervals a few times in the past, but over the last ten days or so, I committed to it, made it my default browser, spent a lot of time time setting up my bookmarks to work with its somewhat limited structure.

I loved it. I really did. It was faster than Firefox, my previous browser, and more efficient and functional (in an intuitive sense) than Internet Explorer.

But tonight I am back on Firefox.

I noticed almost from the start that I was getting lots more spam mail in Gmail and then, when I ran Spybot, the search & destroy software that protects my hard drive, that there were a whole helluva lot more adware every time I had the disk checked. This stuff is not necessarily malicious but it is intrusive and annoying.

I did various checks, including running Spybot and cleaning the disk and then, alternately, running Chrome and/or Firefox afterwards for an hour or two and then having Spybot scan the disk system again. In every instance, the amount of adware, which varied from none to 20 instances, was increased following a Chrome session. Ditto the spam in my email.

Is this a common problem? I cannot find any indication that this is so in an (admittedly simple) web search. I know that Spybot makes clear that it is checking out my Firefox and IE browsers (all of the adware is identified as being browser-oriented, by the way) and it does not seem that I can do anything to make it include Chrome in that search, so the evidence is strong that this should not be an issue specific to me but to all users.

Input, people, please. I am most annoyed and we don't want that, do we?

Anent my last post...

Well, I haven't really gotten my ass in gear over here like I said I would, have I? I had a wife once who would shudder and run out the room whenever I said "Trust me," so maybe it's congenital.

My excuses are at least solid. Yesterday was the Great American Beer Festival in Denver and I had to pay attention to the online broadcast of the awards and post stories on Liquid Diet and that other site which pays me to do so. Also we did a revamp of LD yesterday (thanks to the folks at the WordPress Support Forums who sent me in the right direction, Chris Olbekson of C3M Digital who did the heavy lifting and the always reliable Rob Davis for the new logo).

I was so far out of date that it took three progressions of updates to get me caught up, something I discovered just as I was about to embark on the task all by myself which would have meant going for one giant leap and who knows what would have happened. Those guys saved my bacon.

Go check it out.

So true.

Go here for the original.

Too bad the internets force us to read bassackward.

As I have said before, and as the blogroll over to the right and down a bit will attest, I love this site.The recording of a walk across the nation, photo by photo, is brilliant and the adventure is wonderful to share. Even Superman couldn't do it better no matter how inspired his choice of a city from which to start.

On the other hand, I'm Just Walkin' is the perfect site to serve as a model of the internet's greatest weakness, one that is rarely mentioned. The process of one post replacing the last on a website is perfectly logical and causes no problems when all the posts are relatively independent, but when the second post closely follows or extends the post previous (and sometimes even continues it), it is frustrating for a new visitor to a site to come in during the middle of things and have to backtrack to catch up.

It is sad that no one can come to this site where a journey is being so graphically presented and see the whole process from beginning to end without going through nearly impossible machinations in order to do so.

I can't wait for the book. If this thing doesn't result in a book, I'll be astonished.

An echo from a Forum far away.

I'll give my old sparring mate James Hudnall this: he was flat-out nuts long before everybody else and he's hung on long enough that now he can make a sorta living at it.

There's something to be said for stick-to-it as a lifestyle. Not much, but something. 

You probably should read this.

Every word of it.

Really.

There are only five?

I don't think the folks who prepared this list have visited enough right wing political websites to make the definitive claims they do, but I will admit that, short of Glenn Beck and maybe Ann Coulter/Michelle Malkin (I still think they're the same person though it's not clear if the latter is the former in blackface or vice versa), I can't come up with many wingnuts who could crack the top five.

Sure people like Big Dick and his Batshit Daughter talk Teh Crazy but they're just pure malevolent, not out-and-out nuts. And Dick Armey and other poltical scammers are just plain grifters, willing to sell out their followers and the whole country if need be, yes, but arguable of the same amoral mold as big bankers, lawyers and insurance execs.

And crazed tea-baggers, GOP congress critters and the Fox TV audience can plead that old get-out-of-free card the Catholic Church used to offer up to Pagan Babies and the like: Invincible Ignorance.

"My dead hands" gun nuts are a special case that, for personal safety, I think I'll skip over.

 

I am very dependent upon my Gmail account.

It ain't perfect and sometimes if frustrates me, but it's the best email service I've ever had.

I don't want it to be Facebook or Twitter. I have Facebook and Twitter for those things.

I would seriously prefer that management does not screw it up so that it does more things that I don't want than the things I do want.

What are the chances?